


November: Drabble Every Day - 2014 Drabbles

by crossingwinter



Series: Irresponsible Storytelling [13]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Civil War, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Pre-Series, The World of Ice and Fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-23 14:04:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 17,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2550200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I plan to write a drabble every day in the month of November.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Summerhall had been worse (Rhaella)

Summerhall had been worse than this, it had been.  Hot, everything hot, and ash filling her throat as she labored and pushed and yelled to bring Rhaegar into the world.  Her yells had been quiet next to the destruction of the great castle, the pain of her body nothing compared to the fear that the flames would spread, fan out and engulf her and everything would be for nothing.  

Summerhall had been worse than this, with air so thick with debris and heat like a wet rag over her mouth that she could barely breath.  The whistling of the wind through the castle was nothing like the screams of her grandparents, of her aunt and uncles as flame took them, one by one, until there was nothing that separated them from the destruction.

Summerhall had been worse than this, and she had survived Summerhall.  Rhaella will survive this.

She tries to breathe—breathe because this—this she knows.  How many times had she done this?  How many times had she survived?  Rhaegar, her first, her…she could not think of him, not now, or she would surely die.  They said that the rubies of his breastplate swam in the Trident now—her darling boy with his voice like silk smashed to bits like a porcelain doll.  He had gone the way of Alysanne and Daeron, Naerys and Aegon and Jaehaerys, her precious babes all dead—all six of them save Viserys and the one between her legs, fighting to come into a world that doesn’t want her.

She knows she’s a girl—knows it, feels it.  She could feel it with Naerys and she can feel it now.  Naerys had not been a fighter, Naerys had not been strong.  None of them had been like this save Rhaegar.  Viserys’ birth had been easy, smooth, with maesters hovering over her birthing bed.  Not so with this one, born in a storm, born in a calamity like Rhaegar.

 _Rhaegar_.  She will not think of him now.  Later, when it’s done, but she will not be defeated by her grief.  Later, when she has a new dragon to hold to her breast, to protect and love and cherish—that much the sweeter for having been born in a time of loss.

None of her girls had lived, and how she’d wanted one, wanted one as dearly as she wanted her sons to live.  Would that they had all lived—each of those children, and the ones who had died in her womb, the ones who would have been no younger than Lords Stark and Baratheon—that they could have all grown and fought alongside their brother, for if her sons had not died, surely Rhaegar would not have been defeated—not with brothers at his side.  

And there he is—Rhaegar again.  Rhaegar always.  Rhaegar—a more acute pain than the stretching of her flesh around her daughter’s head, of the spasms wracking the base of her spine—so hot she sees white stars when she opens her eyes.   Not even the screaming of the heavens and seas can match it.

Rhaegar had been a warrior, and by all the gods that had not saved him.  Rhaegar had been good, and kind, and gentle, and none of that mattered now for he is gone, gone,  _gone,_ and Rhaella only has Viserys now, her solace, her precious boy—only Viserys and this girl, this fighter who is warring her way into the world.

 _Daenerys_.  She will be named Daenerys.  Born in war, and—gods—she prays as she holds her breath and  _pushes_ —a bringer of peace.


	2. Any idiot can buy armor (Gendry)

"What sorts of friends?"  He sees suspicion in her eyes and if he were in a better mood, maybe, Gendry would try to calm it.  But it’s not been that sort of an afternoon, so he just grunts.

"You’ll meet them soon enough."

Lady Brienne doesn’t seem to believe him—he can see that much in her face before turning to face the road again. He doesn’t care though.  Not at all, and he goes back to hammering his sword.  

There are days when it’s easy to forget Arya Stark, and the way she ran off angrily into the night and the way she used to chew her lip when she was nervous, or lying, or thinking. And then there are days when it isn’t, days when Willow stamps her foot and glares at him and her eyes are the wrong color and her hair a bit too long, and the jut in her jaw isn’t Arya’s but the stubbornness _is_. Those are the days he turns back to the forge and hits steel so hard it sounds like the screams on the road to Harrenhal. Those are the days when he wants to be left well enough alone, and today has been one of those days.

It’s not the first time people have asked him about his father and King Robert in the same breath. This Lady Brienne thinks she’s the first, he’d guess, but how many times can you be asked the same question without putting two and two together? The first night it had hit him—really hit him as truth and not just some odd fantasy of the highborns that stopped by Mott’s—he’d been curled up next to Arya and he had almost laughed and woken her up. He hadn’t though.  He’d kept it to himself, because if he was wrong…if he was wrong he didn’t want to share that with anyone.  What kind of idiot goes around saying they’re a King’s bastard?  And especially to a Stark of Winterfell.  Lem had said he shouldn’t worry about stealing kisses from a princess, back when she’d been a princess, but in a different world he might have been a prince.  Of course she was to be married now, if word was true.  To Bolton’s son.

When he thinks of that he strikes the steel hard again,  _is there gold in the village? Where is the Brotherhood? On their way you monster, and they’ll kill you if you aren’t already dead._

She does remind him of Arya—Willow. Not exactly the same. She doesn’t play at fighting with a broom handle, but she looks after everyone the way Arya had. He hasn’t forgotten the girl they called Weasel. He wonders what happened to her sometimes. She probably died, but a part of him hopes she’ll drift up to the inn one day, and they’ll give her a spot of soup and she’ll cling to Willow like she clung to Arya and she’ll be safe here. He can keep them safe, here. If they listen to him. Willow doesn’t listen to him, for the most part, but she does when it matters. Like Arya. Except Willow won’t run off the way Arya did. She hasn’t got anywhere else to go.

She should have listened to him—she shouldn’t have run off, and gotten herself taken by the Hound. Because yes, she was going back to Wintefell now, but he can’t imagine she’s…surely _that’s_ not the home she wants. She wants her brothers—dead—and her parents—dead—and even her sister too, but she can’t have any of that, no more than Gendry can have…

He’s got what he wanted though. Hasn’t he? He’s a knight now, and a forge of his own for as long as he wants it. How much higher than that can he expect to climb, with winter coming and war winding down?

"Gendry," Brienne’s voice is low, urgent, and he looks up. "You’ll want a sword, and armor. These are not your friends. They’re no one’s friends."

Lightning flashes through the sky and he sees it—that helm and he feels his fist tighten around his hammer.

"Him." He isn’t aware of his mouth moving until he hears his own voice, low in his throat. King Robert had killed Rhaegar Targaryen with a hammer, why couldn’t he kill the Hound? He’d brought her back to them, and they’d destroyed her family.

"Not him. His helm." Brienne doesn’t say more, hurrying off back to the inn, and Gendry goes back into the forge. He wants to follow her, but it’s stupid to go without armor—not that he has much armor to begin with.  _Any idiot can buy armor_ , he thinks sadly as he fiddles with straps. It doesn’t fit him properly, but it’ll have to do, and his sword is too blunt to be of use so he grabs a spear instead.

The fight had gotten started fast, and she’s already killed some of them. That knight who came with her is fighting off two at once, but he’s too occupied to see that one of them has knocked that fancy sword from her—that’s Valyrian steel, where did she get that?—and he’s—

He doesn’t know why it is that a giant woman with a Valyrian steel blade reminds him of a scrap of a girl playing swords with a broom handle, but today has been the sort of day where Arya’s in everything. Brienne has killed the man in the Hound’s helm and the man on top of her is eating her face, and her body is twitching and writhing in pain under his.

She’s not a little girl, he thinks stupidly.  She’s not Arya. She’s not a knight either. But he is—and what good’s being a knight if he doesn’t do something. So he jams his spear into the back of the man’s neck.


	3. ubi caritas et amor, deus ibi est (Sandor)

> [ _ubi caritas et amor, deus ibi est_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=457nVpxJDkA)

He’s a fucking parody of himself.  A fucking whining, crying parody.  Maybe Gregor was right, and he’s always squealing for attention, trying to prove that he’d been put on this earth for one reason or another.  Maman had once told him that God had a plan for everyone.  But he’d stopped believing that when she’d died.

He’d spent more than half his life making fun of church-goers.  What sort of fucking goodness did they see in the world?  What was Christ’s love when people didn’t love one another?  Love wasn’t real—couldn’t be real, because if love was real, he’d have a brother who didn’t shove his face in a fucking fire pit just for playing with a tin soldier.  It was an old tin soldier, one that had belonged to his father.  A World War One replica.  How glorious—going off to die in mud and shit, fighting a war against a dead monarch and a dying monarchy.  Vive la République.  Vive la every man gets a say, even if that say is idiotic, bordel de merde.  Pretend everyone likes one another, or at least respects one another, and they’re not just shoving faces in the fire for disagreeing and stealing a toy soldier.

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.  He sees those words plastered on every fucking governmental building he sees, and what do they even mean?  It’s not like he’s ever been free, not like he’s ever really been equal, and fuck his brother, so fuck fraternité.  Fraternité was for people who had a home to go back to, not for drifters like him, riding around on their motorcycles—a Harley, not the shitty mopeds he saw in movies about Italy—and pretending not to notice that every city, it seemed, has a rue Saint Grégoire and no rue Saint Sandor. 

How many cities has he ridden through?  How many, with their cobblestoned centre villes and their cafés where he could sit till fuck all hours if he wanted, not that he did, but he didn’t have anything better to do with himself.  How many different versions of the words liberté, égalité, fraternité has he seen, how many Mariannes, how many, how many, how fucking many bordel putain de merde?  Each fucking city, each fucking village has one somewhere, you barely have to look, and those words just drill into your head, and you’re not equal, you’re not free of your brother, even though he’s in Paris now doing fuck knows what and you’re anywhere-but-Paris.

It takes him six fucking years and nearly getting himself burned alive again and a little girl singing about God’s love and charity for him to make him notice that every city also has churches.  Churches, older, more ornate, more empty because it seems like everyone’s fled them, but there they are, and when he goes inside, it’s quiet, and cool, and dark, like before maman died and he would go to mass with her. 

And now, every town he goes to he stops in for a mass, listening to the organs, listening to the choirs singing the same song that she’d sung, echoing off stone that’s who knows how fucking old.  And he becomes a fucking parody of himself because now when he drifts, he counts the churches he goes into, the cathedrals, staring through rose windows that are round and blue like her eyes.  He won’t go to Paris, but he visits Reims, and Chartres, like some sort of fucking tourist, and makes his way north to the coast and as he riding along the Normand coastline—passing American after American with their shorts and their chewing gum and baseball caps—he knows where he’s going, as though it’s a pilgrimage.

He wishes the roads up to it weren’t so covered in shops.  Buy your toy knight!  Here have a pastry!  Buy a beret and a striped shirt putain as if this place weren’t holy, as if it’s not close to a thousand years old.  But then again, why should anything that matters to him be taken seriously?  When has the world been what he wants it to be?  When hasn’t he had to find value in what he likes, and fuck what everyone else says?  So he climbs le mont, and enters the monastery, and sits in a pew in the chapel for hours on end, listening to the wind on the rocks, and wondering if God could really have a plan for him.  


	4. Lya (Lyanna)

She had been four years old when she had decided she didn’t want anyone to call her Lya ever again.  Lya was a name for little girls, the name that elder brothers called baby sister when they ruffled her hair and told her that she should go back inside, and that a lady’s place was with her needles, not in the practice yards (even if she was only watching).

She had announced it over dinner the night that Ned had ridden south to the Eyrie with ten of their household guards to serve as a page to Jon Arryn.  ”I am not Lya anymore,” she had told her father, who raised his eyebrows over his goblet of wine.  ”I am Lyanna.”

"Lya," he had intoned.  (How her father had  _always_  intoned.)

"Ly _anna_ ,” she insisted.  ”Lya is a name for little girls.  And I am  _not_  a little girl.”  (How little she had been—how small a four year old is.)

He had looked at her sadly, and taken another sip of wine.  ”Lyanna, then,” he had agreed, and Father had never called her Lya again.  (Later, she had wondered if it hurt him.  Later, she had wondered if he hadn’t called her that because Lyanna sounded less like Lyarra.  She had never asked him that.  She had not known how to.)

-

It was easy to train Benjen out of it.  He was truly a baby, after all, only two, and she had pinched him whenever he called her Lya.  Within a week, he had it down pat, but insisted that she stop calling him Ben if he was to stop calling her Lya.  She had rolled her eyes at him, and said that she was doing it because she wasn’t a baby anymore and he  _was_ , but that had made him cry.

"You’re only proving my point," she had insisted, crossing her arms over her chest.  (How old she had felt, doing that.  How like Brandon, who was at least twice her size the last time he had visited from Barrowton.)  It had only made Benjen cry louder, and she had sighed (melodramatically) and said, "Fine.  Benjen."

Benjen and Lyanna, left alone.  She hoped Benjen would not be fostered away, but if he was, it wouldn’t for many years yet.  (He truly was still a baby after all.)  With Benjen, she explored the godswood, and the baily, the rooves of the castle, and the crypts beneath.  The two of them together, always.  Lyanna and Benjen,   Benjen and Lyanna.  It was with Benjen that she first held a sword in her hands. Benjen—where Brandon and Ned and Father had told her no—had been eager to sneak her an extra practice sword that they might play at fighting together in the godswood, far from the sight of Martyn Cassel who would have pried them apart and swatted her on the rear and sent her inside to her sewing.  (Always sewing, when she was younger.  Why was it always sewing.  They should have started her off with knitting—easier, more fun, more creative.  She would come to love sewing in time, but she would have looked forward to knitting, at least.)

Benjen never once slipped.  Not once in her whole life—not after she’d pinched him those three times, anyway.  Not even after Brandon came back and didn’t care at all how many times she reminded him.  To Benjen, she was always Lyanna, and never Lya.  With Benjen, at least, she was always what she wanted to be.

-

She had asked Brandon to call her Lyanna.  She had insisted, she had shouted, she had even, at one point, begged.  But he had refused, and she couldn’t get away with pinching him the way she had pinched Benjen because he’d just laugh harder and rub his hands together and ask if she truly wished to fight over it.  (Brandon had been so much bigger than she had been when she was six.  Brandon was twelve, and shooting up in height the way that men did, and Father had clapped him on the shoulder proudly and said that he’d be taller than him.)

Brandon only ever called her Lyanna when he was furious with her—when she had stolen his horse to go riding with Benjen, or when she pointed out that he was being idiotic in front of peoople.  (She could never remember what idiotic things he did.  Just that he only found reason to call her Lyanna when he was angry with her.  It almost made her wish to make him angry.)

Even at Harrenhal, he had introduced her as “My sister, Lya—Lyanna to you.  Lya to me.”  She’d pinched him, and he’d grinned, and she’d rolled her eyes and whomever they were speaking with had chuckled quietly to themselves and made comments about siblings.  She had been furious with him, for it.  Furious, because even if she had been a little girl at four (and she had been, even she had known that at Harrenhal), she  _wasn’t_  a little girl anymore.  But she knew Brandon well enough that if she had told him she was a woman grown and flowered, he would make some snide comment about how she shouldn’t say that too loudly around so many knights, lest they get ideas.  As if she didn’t know how to protect herself.  

"Better they think you’re just a girl, and not look too close at you," Brandon had said, "than that they notice you’ve got teats now."  That was what he’d said, with a knowing, elder-brother-smile, and she’d flushed hotly because so  _what_  if she had teats—she’d knocked three of them on their arses only yesterday.  But she couldn’t say that to Brandon.  Brandon didn’t know.  Only Benjen did, and Howland, Benjen who had helped her into the armor in the first place and had helped her paint the shield after the heart tree in Winterfell.

It hadn’t mattered if they’d noticed her teats in the end or not, of course.  And she wonders if Brandon had called out for Lya or for Lyanna when he’d learned she had gone.

-

Lyanna knows she’s dying.  She knows it with that horrible weight of just  _knowing_ , the same way she’d known she was pregnant, the same way she’d known her father and brother were dead when Ser Arthur wouldn’t tell her what was in the letter.  She knows it the way she knows the time of day just from seeing the color of the sunlight, the way she knows what direction the wind comes in from hearing it whistle through the mountains.

Lyanna Stark is dying.

She hears them fighting below, knows that Ned knows she’s here.  She had called to him, when she’d first heard him dismounting outside—called him “Eddard” because he would know she meant it if she called him Eddard, know that she was scared and needed him, know because she never called him Eddard as he had never called her Lya.  He’d called back— a strangled cry of “Lyanna!  Lyanna I’m coming!” that had made her cry because she would not die alone, at least.

He is covered in blood when he arrives by her side, and she sees it in his eyes that he knows that she is dying—sees it in the way that they go dark, and heavy in his face, the way his shoulders sag as he kneels down next to her and kisses her forehead.

She makes him promise to keep her boy safe, makes him swear it.  She makes him promise to stay alive, because Benjen will need someone to go home to, makes him promise not to leave her until it’s over, makes him promise, promise, promise, because Ned always keeps his promises.

"I promise, Lya, I promise," he whispers, his voice shaking and she wants to cry because even when she’d been a girl of four years old, she’d never felt as young as she does now, and oh, oh, oh if she’d never gone and insisted on being Lyanna, if she’d stayed young, and ignorant forever…


	5. Bleeding Heart (Sam)

"If you want to help them, Sam, volunteer at a soup kitchen. They’ll misspend any money you give them—use it on drugs and booze." Those had been his father’s words when he’d dropped Sam off at the tiny apartment he was renting on the Upper East Side. (Tiny and cheap because they were breaking ground for the new subway a few blocks away. Tiny and cheap because Dickon’s NYU tuition was one of the most expensive tuitions in the country, and Dad said he wouldn’t pay for Sam to bum around and find a job while he had to pay for Dickon’s studies.)

It was, of course, one of the first things Sam had noticed—homelessness. People sleeping in the corners of subway stations, people wearing more rags than clothes that had a grayish, oily sheen to them, people on street corners with signs that read—misspelled—“I am six months out of work. Please if you have change to spare god bless.”

Sam did volunteer at a soup kitchen up in Yorkville, and he did his best to keep protein bars in his pocket so he could at least give those away when he took the subway. Edd said he had a bleeding heart. “When you realize you are in New York and you can’t help everyone, then you will have put your head on properly.”

"How can you not want to help?" Sam asked.

"Don’t got time," Edd replied dolorously "And even if I did have time, I’d be doing what you are doing. Or giving money to organizations. Not that I have any money."

"Yes, but—"

"Sam, I barely make enough to feed myself. I can’t just hand out cliff bars to every poor soul I see."

Jon had grimaced, but agreed with Edd. “Better to give things to institutions that know what they’re doing. They know how to find those places, Sam.” And Sam did, but it was still hard to stand on the crowded 6 after he got off from work—taking up too much space and listening to someone singing a song and then passing a cap, professing that he was out of work and had a two year old who needed dental surgery. What if he really did? What if that poor little girl was—but his father’s voice always came into his head. “They are scam artists, Sam. They have phones and iPods and everything. Don’t give those lazy bums your hard earned money.” And his hands stayed in his pocket, next to his wallet, filled with his hard-earned money. Not that it was that hard earned. He had, surprisingly, found work with relative ease at the New York Public Library, and he liked. Better there than home alone with his friends scattered to the Upper West, and Queens, and Brooklyn.

Sam stopped inside Grand Central one afternoon to find a gift for Jon’s birthday. There were always new gadgets and doodads at the shops in Grand Central, and it was on his way home. Usually he avoided the place at rush hour, filled with rushing people off to take trains upstate and to Connecticut. And for a moment, he felt like a great big rock in a river, with people rushing along on either side of him, hurrying to their trains while he waddled his way through the arching passageways.

"Please, please will you help me?" The voice had the quiet tone of one who was past tears, past hope. And sure enough, the woman’s face was streaked with dried tears, and she was clutching a dirty bundle to her chest that, Sam realized with a lurch, was a baby.

"Ones with babies are the worst," his father had said. "Using their kids to get attention. Despicable."

"Hello there," Sam said, pushing his way through the crowd to her. Her eyes widened in what might have been fear, so Sam stayed a few paces away from her. "Are you all right?"

And she burst into tears, shaking her head, and clutching her baby to her chest.

"There now," Sam said, startled, "We’ll sort you out then. How can I help?"

"I—I—" she looked down at her baby, and it looked like she didn’t even know how to begin.

"Have you got anything to eat?" he asked her, and he tugged a bar out of his pocket. She jerked her head up to look at him, at his proffered food, and shook her head, trembling. Sam ripped open the plastic wrapping for her and handed it to her. She took a bite, chewed slowly, then shoved the rest of the bar tearfully into her mouth.

Sam waited for her to swallow and when she did, she seemed calmer. “I…thank you, sir.”

"Of course," Sam said. "Anyone would."

"No one else did," she said darkly. "I have been here since two o’clock and you’re the first to even notice me."

"Well," Sam began, not sure what to even say to that. "Well, here we are now. Where are you headed, and how can I help you get there."

"I’m not sure," she said slowly. "Didn’t have a plan. Just wanted to get to New York. Wanted to get away from my—his," she adjusted her baby against her chest, "father."

Sam’s heart broke a little. And he wanted to give her a hug, but he knew enough to know you don’t go hugging strange women just because you notice them when they are upset. “I am not sure what I can do to help,” he said. “But…if you feel comfortable with it, I can get you dinner and we can brainstorm.”

There were tears in her eyes again and she closed the distance between them, giving him a one armed hug. “Thank you. Thank you,” she blubbered into his neck.

"Of course," Sam replied, patting her gingerly on the back. "I’m Sam, by the way."

"Gilly. My name’s Gilly."


	6. Flowers for mother (Bran)

Old Nan said that mother wasn’t feeling well, that she would be bedridden for a good long while. “Your brother was a big babe,” she had said, patting Bran on the shoulder. “Bigger than you were. Easier too, but your mother needs rest now.”

"When can I see her?" Bran asked, looking up at her, putting on the face Sansa said made him look too cute to refuse. He missed his mother, being able to burrow down into her side while she told him bedtime stories, asking him of his adventures and listening to the tales of the frogs he and Arya had found in the godwood, or the way Robb had carried him piggyback around the castle and told him what every corner was, and who worked there. He missed his mother’s hands in his hair, and her gentle comments of, "And then what happened?" and he would prattle on, smiling up at her.

Old Nan crinkled a smile down at him. “Soon enough. You’ll hardly notice, it will come so soon.”

But he did notice. Two whole days passed after Rickon was born. He heard his baby brother wailing, and even thought he heard his mother hushing him the ways she had once hushed Bran when he had come to her crying over scraped hands and knees from climbing. He did notice, because instead of mother kissing him and telling him it was time for bed, it was Robb, who wouldn’t even let him and Arya finish their bout of cards before sending them their separate ways like mother did.

On the third day, Bran decided to do something about it. After breakfast, he snuck off, not even telling Arya where he was going. She hadn’t asked more than twice, because Jon had ruffled her hair and told her to let Bran have his secrets, and that he’d tell her soon enough. Bran went into the godswood and began plucking some of the wildflowers that grew there—the pretty red ones that mother loved so much, and the blue ones because sometimes red and blue made mother think of home, and the trees seemed to whisper his name in approval.

When he had picked as many flowers as he could manage, he snuck back inside, climbing the steps of the keep as quickly as he could, and if the guards saw him, none of them tried to stop him, even if mother was tired.

He pushed open her bedroom door and found her awake, pale and sweaty in a way that did not make sense for someone who has only been lying down for the past few days. Her eyes darted to him, and for a moment he was nervous because what if he wasn’t supposed to be here? And then a smile cracked across her face, and she held open her arms.

"I picked you flowers, mother," he said, clambering onto the bed and handing them to her. Some of them got bent in his climb, and he felt a little bad, but mother didn’t seem to notice.

"They are so lovely," she said pressing them to her nose and breathing deeply. "Thank you, Bran. You are so sweet to think of it."

Bran swelled with pride, and mother laid the flowers on the bed next to her. Then, she wrapped her arms around him and said, “Come—tell me what you have been doing while I have been recovering.”


	7. Everyone knows that. (Davos)

"Shireen is coming over," Devan announces as he hurries out to greet his father. Davos should have sensed something was afoot with the hurrying, Devan’s backpack—a hand-me-down from Maric which is too big for Devan— swinging from side to side on his little back.

"Is she now?" Davos asks, smiling down at his son. Devan has Marya’s smile on and a bright look in his eyes. "And do her parents know?"

"No. She is telling her father now. We will need Matthos’ bed. If not Dale’s."

Davos raises his eyebrows. “Will you, now? And why is that?”

"Married people get big beds. Everyone knows that." He rolls his eyes as though it is the most obvious thing in the world.

"Married people—?" Davos begins, but he doesn’t have time to finish the thought because Shireen has arrived, dragging her father by the hand.

"Tell him," she says forcefully to Devan. "Tell him we are married."

"We are," Devan says seriously to Shireen’s father. "We said our vows in the Sept this afternoon."

"The Sept? And what kindergarten has a Sept?" Mr. Baratheon says coolly.

"It’s under the jungle gym," Shireen responds with the exact same tone Devan had used when saying that everyone knew married people had big beds.

"And was there a septon?" asks Mr. Baratheon.

"No, but Edric was there and he made sure we didn’t mess up."

"It would be Robert’s son," mutters Mr. Baratheon.

"Well, Shireen," Davos says loudly. "You and your parents are welcome to come over for a celebratory dinner tonight." Mr. Baratheon shoots him a ‘what on earth are you playing at’ expression, and he presses on. "Unfortunately, you probably weren’t aware of a little loop hole in the vows. Marriage only counts when you are twenty five. You need a parent’s signature between the ages of eighteen and twenty four. Before that, it is not official."

They look devastated, and shoot glances at one another. “That said,” Davos says, bending at the waist and resting his hands on his knees so he is at eye level with them and smiling, “I think we can work around the law a little bit, but Shireen, you will probably need to stay at your home so we don’t attract attention. “

"Thank you, Daddy!" Devan cries out, pelting himself at Davos’ middle and wrapping his arms around him.

"Thank you Mr. Devan’s Dad!" Shireen says, hopping up down and clapping her hands excitedly, her pig tails bobbing.

She grabs Devan’s hand and they walk towards the gateway of the schoolyard together, talking excitedly, undoubtedly planning their happily newlywed life.

"That was clever," Mr. Baratheon says as he and Davos begin walking.

Davos chuckles. “I have four sons older than Devan. He is not the first to get married in kindergarten. Nor will he be the last, I think. Davos.” He extends a hand.

"Stannis."


	8. Motherhood was grief (Alysanne)

The bells were ringing, loud and heavy and Alysanne felt tears leaking from her eyes.  She rolled over, and pressed her face into her pillows, letting them absorb the moisture, letting them absorb the sobs that wracked her body.

Why was it that sobs could sound so much like laughter?  Why was it?  She would never laugh again, of that she was certain.  She would never smile again.

Motherhood was grief.  She had learned that when Aegon had died, her first boy, a boy that eleven others could not replace. She had learned that when Daella’s letters had ceased, when her girl who had been overjoyed at the prospect of having children of her own had died bringing Aemma into the world.  She had learned that when Maegelle’s body had been given to the Silent Sisters, when Saera had fled without a word, when Valerion’s head had been kicked in by a horse he’d stood to close too, when illness had taken Gaemon from her before he’d even lived three days.  

There had been happy years.  There had been good ones, glorious ones, perfect ones.  How many nights with Aemon and Alyssa snuggled against her side?  How many times had she kissed Jaehaerys and told him that there would be one more and watched his face light up with joy? Twelve times, she had labored sons and daughters into this world, twelve times she had held a bloody babe in her arms and stared down into violet eyes and felt the purest of joys, the purest of elations, even while remnant pain tore at her body.

And now Gael—Gael, her sweetest child, her gentlest child, her forever child.  Gael, whose laughter had been like music—not the tolling of mourning bells, or the sobs of her mother—like the plucking of harp strings as she rocked back and forth and wove flowers together into little crowns. Gael, sweet Gael, her youngest, her dearest, her last before her body ceased to flower—her Gael who had learned too soon that motherhood was grief and thrown herself into the river.  

Bells tolled for her now.  A summer fever, Jaehaerys had commanded they say.  A  _lie_  to make sweet the horrible truth that her girl had died of a broken heart and a broken spirit where nothing had daunted her before.  A lie, when they should hunt down that singer and peel the skin from his body for the grief he had caused.  

But such a thought only made her sob even harder.  Even if they could find him and bring him back to court, nothing would bring back Gael’s smile, Gael’s tinkling laugh, so unlike the doleful tolling of the bells.  


	9. Pick Your Poison

You are supposed to love me. You are supposed to smile when you see my face, speak kind words, protect me from the ills of the world.

You are supposed to love me, but I see no love in your eyes. Coldness perhaps, or distance. I do not know what it is; I do not understand it. But it is there, and it is not what it should be, and you are not what you should be because of it. And I know what it is not, and thus, what you are not.

You are supposed to love me. Is it truly so hard? Am I so little, am I so repulsive? What in my self do I love that you do not see? That you do not love? Should I love it in myself? Should I remove it?

You are supposed to love me. We two should stand back to back against the enclosing world, not alone and not afraid for it would be the two of us. But you do not love me, so I stand alone.

You are supposed to love me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this drabble with several different characters/character dynamics involved. I would love to see how you read it!


	10. The North Remembers (Sansa, Arya, Bran, Rickon)

With winter at the Gate, the snow seeps in at the seams—chills that catch at her neck and face when she passes windows that had been shuttered to keep the cold at bay, swirls of snow that blow their way into the castle before the doors are slammed shut.

She hears whispers of the North, of how it won’t be long before it starves, how Winterfell is weak, how it’s people remember what happened to the ones who rode south.

She shuts her ears to them. Back, painful words, back memories unwanted, of brothers dueling in the summer snow, of the sounds of childish laughter as Bran and Arya pelted one another with snowballs. Away memories of sunshine and her father’s head rolling across the steps of the Sept.

She has no siblings now; she has a father still.

The North may remember, but Sansa forgets.

-

It’s snowing in the Riverlands and when she wakes in the morning, the scent of it—a perverse crisp dampness—lingers in her nose. It is not salty like the air outside, but rather sappy like trees chopped for firewood.

She waits now. It has been three days while they decide what to do with her, and she is past panicking about where she will go, what she will do if she is cast out.

It is snowing in the Riverlands, and her pack is there—across the sea. She will take them north to a castle that rises above the snow, a castle where she once played and laughed and loved.

She knows those loyal to Joffrey, Queen Cersei, Ser Ilyn, Ser Gregor, and all the rest, hold her home, but she knows that no one has forgotten her father, her mother, her brothers. They will remember her when she takes the pack North, because the North remembers and Arya does too.

-

He sees it all as though he were in the godswood with them. He hears his father’s prayer, watches as he and Arya argue about whether it disrespects the gods to climb the great weirwood, Sansa—smaller than he’s ever seen her staring up into his carved face and crying out in fear, Jon praying for his mother and Robb standing a way away trying not to listen.

He sees others too, others he knew when he was the Stark in Winterfell—Umbers calling their men to arms, Karstarks plotting, a green haired maiden with a merman pin asking for the deliverance of her little lord.

They have not forgotten us, he thinks, or is that some other voice, older, wearier? Surely Bran is not so old and weary. He is only a boy, but he sees more than any boy ever has, any boy ever could, the past dripping into him even in his sleep, things long forgotten, things misremembered under the guise of remembering perfectly. Bran sees it all, Bran knows it all.

The North doesn’t remember, not truly—but Bran does.

-

It was always warm at home. He remembers that much. If ever he was cold, he could go and stand by a wall and the heat of the stones would calm him.

More than that, though…it’s indistinct. Osha reminds him of evenings spent with Bran, but Bran’s face has grown fuzzy in his mind, like mother’s and father’s and Robb’s and his sisters’. Had they ever been there? Any of them? So long as he can remember, he has been on his own—him and Osha.

Lord Magnar tell him that even now the North stirs, it rises, it longs for a Stark in Winterfell, and that when it does, Skagos will be free at last. But Lord Magnar doesn’t care for Starks, Osha told him that, so here, he isn’t Rickon Stark, he is Rickon just Rickon because he hasn’t got a mother or a father or brothers or sisters anymore.

He wonders what it is that the North thinks of when they think of him. His lord father’s baby, probably. Hardly more than a child compared to Robb and Bran. He wonders what the North remembers because he—he never had the chance to know.


	11. "There’s someone there—in the water!" (Gendry)

"There’s someone there—in the water!" Gendry looked up, and he reached for the cheap steel that Lem had gotten him. The good steel, it seemed, had been scavenged by the Freys after the wedding, but they had found some cheap that was better than what he had had before.

There was a rustle of movement, of men getting to their feet, some even reaching for their swords. They had found plenty in the river already—and some of the men had only been mostly dead, with enough fever and confusion to try and throttle whichever of them tugged him loose.

This one was different though—a naked woman with brittle white hair and a slashed throat, her face in ribbons as though she had shred it herself. Thoros and Lord Beric knelt at her side. Thoros removed his muddy cloak and covered her.

"No." It was barely more than a whisper, but everyone heard it.

"Harwin?" asked Beric.

"That’s Lady Catelyn. Lady Stark."

Gendry’s head snapped back to the corpse, and, almost without realizing it, he took a step closer.

If she had ever looked like Arya, he couldn’t say. Her face was too torn and her coloring was off. Not even when they had been starving on the road to Harrenhal had Arya looked the way this water-mottled woman did. But maybe…maybe their noses were the same? yes—that was definitely Arya’s…he felt ill.

"Poor woman," he heard someone say.

"She did that to her face?"

"Heard she clawed it apart when her son died."

She had loved him that much then. It didn’t surprise him, that Arya had a better mother than his own—a mother who loved her son and mourned him to the destruction of her flesh. Would she have clawed her face apart for Arya? Or maybe it was for all her dead sons and the girl she assumed dead too. He wanted to look away, but could not. If—when they found Arya again, he would tell her. Tell her everything. She would want to know.

"I can’t, Beric," Thoros was saying, very quietly. "She wouldn’t want to live like this. And besides, I don’t know if i can for anyone but you."

Lord Beric watched him closely with his one eye, his face very still and his hand resting unconsciously on the white hair of Catelyn Stark.

"Are you my mother, Thoros? Could you bring back a man without a head?" he asked so quietly that Gendry wasn’t even sure he had heard properly, and a moment later, Lord Beric bent to kiss the corpse.


	12. "You are better without a father, my son." (Bellegere)

"I have told the scribes downstairs that his name is Balerion," he said.  She was staring at her son, small and huffing in his swaddling clothes, little eyes closed—eyes that were a deeper black than any she’d seen, darker even than Bellenora’s and Narha’s, and certainly darker than the eyes of her other children.  

"I am unfamiliar this with name," she replied quietly, not lifting her eyes from her son.  Aegon did not like that.

"With  _this_  name,” he corrected her and she felt a flash of anger.

"And if I were to ask you to say it in Braavosi, you will do it flawlessly?" she demanded hotly.  

"You and I both know your Common Tongue is better than my Braavosi."

"And you of your Valyrian descent," she mocked.  "You cannot speak her bastard tongue."

"No—I only provide her with more bastards."  He was smirking, she could hear it in his voice, but she did not look at him, not even to give him the playful look she knew he awaited.  Her son shifted in her arms and nuzzled sideways and she drew her breast from her shift.  She knew Aegon’s eyes were on it, and that he would—

"Gods, but I would give suck to that nipple," he said, laughing.

"It is too bad that you are not a babe in need of milk," she replied.  He had not been this way with their girls.  He had been pleased, that much was true.  But perhaps a third child was one too many, and this Dragon Prince of the sunset lands was too familiar with her now.  Her father had always told her to love a man was nothing to be shameful of; her mother had always warned her to be wary of letting a man truly know her.  Perhaps now, she was knowing the difference.

"What if I were to cry?" he asked, teasingly.

"Only in flawless Braavosi," she said, running her fingers through her boy’s soft dark hair.  Softer than her girls’ hair.  Soft like Aegon’s.  "And what of this name Balerion you have named your child."

"How is it that you do not know of Balerion the Black Dread?" he demanded with another laugh.  "The most famous of Dragons."  The Black Dread—it sounded a pirate name, like one from the Stepstones.

"What were his deeds?" she asked.  Curiosity had the better of her now, loath though she was to admit it. 

"He burned Harrenhal, he destroyed the armies of the Reach and the Westerlands in the Field of Fire, he carried King Aegon across Blackwater Bay to King’s Landing on wings like steel and—"

"An actual dragon?" she said quietly.

"Yes."  He sounded as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.  "Yes, and he—"

"You would name our son after a beast?"  Her voice was so quiet that she wondered if he could hear the rage trembling within it.

"Not a beast—a  _dragon_.  A dragon named for a Valyrian god, I might add.”

"A god who hunted my mother’s mothers as they fled from bondage?"

"Well," Aegon looked abashed. "I only meant that—" but he paused, searching for what to say, and the words  _Balerion the Black Dread_  filled her mind again and rage—rage like nothing she’d ever known filled her mind.

"You have named our son for a monstrosity because it pleased you.  And why?  Because his skin is dark like mine?"

Aegon frowned, and though he looked ashamed, she did not care. She did not care at all.  It is no sin to love a man, only to let him near your heart, near enough to hurt you.  ”Get out,” she said.  ”Get out or I shall kill you and throw your body into the canals like the scum that you are.”  He puffed up like an overproud parrot, and she hissed it louder, even as  _Balerion_  still sucked at her breast.  ” _Get out!”_

He did, tripping over himself as he clambered quickly off her bed, slamming the door behind him.  Only then did Balerion begin to cry.

"You are better without a father, my son," she whispered to him, holding him close.  "Better with just me, I promise you."


	13. she wove a crown of dandelions and placed it on his head (Gendry)

Gendry awakens to the cut of choppers overhead and remembers, harshly, horribly where he is. It’s hot, and sticky, and humid, and very much not Boston in October, when the leaves turn brilliant shades of orange and yellow and red.

He sits up and tries to remember his dream while waiting for his wood to subside so he can go and take a piss. It had been a good dream. He had been laughing in it, sitting in the sunshine while she wove a crown of dandelions and placed it on his head.

He groans and gets to his feet. He needs to stop having dreams about her. If he doesn’t, they’ll distract him and he’ll end up getting himself shot the way Lommy had. And besides, what good would it do him to keep thinking about her? She is at Harvard now, with all the other boys whose daddys gave enough of a shit about them to send them to college so they wouldn’t get drafted. They’d be a better fit for her anyway—they’d know who Hatshepsut was, and how to pronounce her name.

She had said she didn’t care about that. He had never been sure if he could believe that.

He arrives at the mess and Hot Pie gives him extra, and he goes to sit with Tom. The mail, it seems, has arrived, and Tom’s bragging about his new issue of Playboy. “I’ll lend it to whichever of you poor fuckers wants it, but only when I’m done,” he says with a belly laugh, before going on to describe the centerfold’s tits in great detail.

Gendry’s only half-listening. His head is full of his dream again. Once she had woven the flower crown and put it on his head, she’d come and sat on his lap, her great grey eyes not seeming so dark when he could see them that close. She had closed them and smiled and made a little noise that wasn’t quite a hum but wasn’t—

"Smaller than usual, this time around. But nice all the same. And the color of them—almost like a peach and—"

"Gendry?" he looks up and finds Beric standing over him. "The mail’s in."

"So?" he shrugs. "No one writes me anyhow." No one would. Just because he dreamed of her sometimes doesn’t mean that she thinks of him at all. She probably doesn’t. She’s not hisb"girl back home" or anything. She probably spends all her energy worrying about her half-brother, also not in college, also halfway around the world. When he had first been drafted, part of him had wildly assumed that he’d end up in the same platoon as Jon Snow. That was before he had gotten to Nam, though, and realized just how many poor bastards got sent out here.

"Coulda sworn I saw one with your name on it." Beric says. It’s not in an unkind way, but Beric’s never been the sort of officer to really be warm with his men. He is not the sort to convey misinformation, though, who would write…he didn’t have a family to care if he got blasted to smithereens by some mine.

There is a letter for him, though, with his name in an untidy scrawl and post marked from Cambridge, and he opens it with trembling hands.

_Dear Gendry,_

_I got arrested last night for protesting the war, and had to spend the night in jail. It wasn’t too bad. I had some friends with me too, and we spent the night singing protest songs and pissing off the guards. Mom wasn’t too pleased though. She doesn’t like the idea of it being on my record. But some things are more important than that._

_I dreamed about you while I dozed off though. I dreamed you were there with me, and we were throwing paper airplanes at the police and they turned into birds that flew away somewhere. I don’t know what that means—the bird bit. I know what the other bit means._

_I miss you. A lot, really. Boys here keep talking to me like I’m a stupid little girl, and I don’t like it. I spend a lot of my time telling them they are bigger morons than they realize, but they don’t listen to that, even though it’s more true for them than whenever I said it to you._

_Don’t get yourself blown up. They keep showing these awful news clips on TV and I am always scared it will be you or Jon on there next. I hope it’s not as bad as the news makes it look, but I am sure it’s worse._

_I will write more. I should have written more before now. I am sorry about that._

_Thinking of you,_

_Arya_

His hands are shaking and he reads the letter three times. And when he finally jams it into his pocket, he goes out to the outskirts of the camp to try and find flowers to weave into a crown. He’ll dry it and send it to her, and maybe she will wear it the next time she protests.


	14. Meeting Arya (Mycah)

He finds her near the back of the line of carts, covered in mud and trying to hold a frog in her hands. “Stay still,” she mutters to the frog, which ribbits loudly and slips from between her fingers. “No!” she yells at it and pounces, dropping to her knees and trying to pin it to the ground.

He grabs a cloth from the side of the blood board that’s dangling off their cart and crouches down next to her, pressing the cloth over her hands. “Let it go,” he says, and she looks up at him with big grey eyes. “It’ll catch in the cloth and you can tie it into a little sack.”

"Oh!" she looks excited. "Thank you." She loosens her hand, and the frog makes a bid for freedom but he is too quick for it, pulling the edges of the cloth together and tying it into a neat knot. The frog struggles against the cloth and ribbits again.

"What are you doing with it anyway?"

"I was going to show it to my father. It’s bigger than the frogs back home," she said cheerily, tucking the knotted pouch into her belt so that the frog dangled and wriggled against her skirt. She is northern, he sees that much from her hair and dress. He wonders if she has ever been this far south in her life. He hadn’t been this far north before this. "Then I was going to put it back in the river."

"Not eat it?" he teases.

She cocks her head at him. “Why would I eat a frog?”

"Some northerners do. The ones in the Neck. They’re teeth are all green from eating frogs all the time."

"They are not," the girl says, her eyebrows coming together. "Your teeth don’t get brown from eating venison, why would they get green from eating a frog?"

"I dunno," he says. "I’m just saying what I’ve heard. Maybe frogs are different."

She looks down at her wriggling pouch, still frowning slightly.

"We could try it," she says. "But then Sansa would make fun of me for having green teeth as well."

"So? It would be fun to have green teeth for a while."

That seems to set her mind and she smiles at him in agreement. “Do you even know how to cook a frog? We can’t eat it raw.”

"No, but it can’t be too hard. Show it to your father, then come back and we’ll try."

She nods vigorously then prances away, her dark braid swinging behind her head. “I’m Arya, by the way,” she calls. “What’s your name?”

"Mycah. I’m Mycah."


	15. this is not how it is supposed to be (Sansa)

She knows when it’s done.  She knows it as if her father’s blade had slid across her own throat.  Quick, and cold, and hard—so very hard and she clutches at the front of her dress as if half expecting blood to be soaking it through.

She had already wept bitterly for the unfairness of it all, wept until her tears had all dried up. She had begged her father, begged the king and queen, begged Jory, begged  _anyone,_ but none of them would listen.  They were supposed to listen.  The blameless aren’t supposed to be punished for the deeds of others—they’re supposed to be protected, you’re supposed to be safe if you do as you’re told and Lady hadn’t done anything.  Lady hadn’t even been there.  Lady is well behaved, well trained.  

And Lady is dead.  Dead and bleeding and Sansa can almost feel the sticky warmth of her blood on her own neck.  But she doesn’t cry.  She can’t cry.  This…this isn’t a pain for crying.  This runs deeper than tears, as if her very heart had been cut out and she can’t feel anything besides the pain of it, the empty thudding of homeless blood through her body, and this isn’t supposed to have happened, this is not how it is supposed to be, and the air comes shallower and shallower in her chest and for a moment she’s afraid that she, too, is dying because she…she…

She has lost her wolf.


	16. That’s how it starts, really. (Sandor)

Sometimes, when you’re driving through Indiana, you’ve got to fucking listen to whatever the fuck they’re playing on the fucking radio.  And if he has to pick between shitty country music and shitty pop music, he’ll pick the shitty pop music because at least the shitty pop music doesn’t remind him how much of a heathen he is or not giving a fuck about god, or rodeos.

That’s how it starts, really.  It starts because he hears some announcer on I-70?  I-65?  He can’t fucking remember, and it doesn’t matter too much because there are just fields everywhere.  Anyway, it starts on a highway in Indiana, where he’s just listening to the radio, hoping that he’ll get near enough to Chicago soon enough that he’ll get better stations when some announcer intros the next Sansa Stark song and talks about how it’s a lot darker than her old stuff, and it’s obviously about “Harry” (whoever the fuck Harry is) and he rolls his eyes even as the acoustic guitar kicks in and then he hears her voice like she’s sitting in the truck cab with him.

She’s got a nice voice, and the lyrics are a little to falsly-poetic for his taste, but she wrote the song and he hears the pain in her voice and however much he  _hates_  acoustic guitar songs, and however much he  _really_  hates pop music, he’s riveted. 

And when he gets to his motel that night, parking the tractor-trailer in the back, he hooks into their shitty wifi and looks up Sansa Stark.  She’s pretty, in a young and plastic pop music sort of way, with a wide red-lipped smile and blue eyes that have this look of half-presence, of pretending-to be there when she stands and has her picture taken on red carpets.  According to some celebrity news website, she got famous for singing shitty acoustic guitar music with an ex-boyfriend who used to hit her, and has had a stream of boyfriends since then.  One website even goes so far as to claim she doesn’t know how to write songs that aren’t about her own life, which is when Sandor changes websites because that’s a moronic thing to say.

It escalates from there.  He buys her albums when he gets home for a day and listens to them, and even if the music is shitty, her voice isn’t, and he can really hear what she means, singing about heartbreak and loneliness, and, somehow, some sort of optimism that he doesn’t understand, because what the fuck is there to be optimistic about?  He brings them with him on his next truck route, and it’s not long before he hums along to them as he drives and wonders what she’s really like—if she’s really like she is in her songs—lonely and hurt but optimistic—or if Sansa Stark, like everyone else in the world, lies to survive.


	17. How high to climb? (Joanna)

How high to climb? She had to climb, after all. Climb, where others were given, take what was denied her. So how high?

She was a Lannister of Lannisport. Always “of Lannisport,” that ever-frustrating addendum which always dampened the interest in the eyes of those she met. Joanna Lannister! Oh how lovely to meet you, my lady. Of Lannisport. Oh. Yes. Right. As if Lannisport were not the true seat of House Lannister before Lann the Clever had winkled Casterly Rock away.

So how high could she climb? Stafford would hold the seat that should be hers one day. Hers, if she’d been born a man, hers if she had been born Dornish like Nymeria. Nymeria had been named for a queen and conqueror for one day she would rule all of Dorne, and Joanna…Joanna was a plain name—meaningless and inconsequential. She had known crofter’s daughters named Joanna before, but not a one named Nymeria or Rhaella. Those were the names of those destined to rise high, who were intended to rise high, regal names for princesses.

Joanna Lannister of Lannisport.

Joanna Lannister! of Lannisport…

Tywin didn’t seem to care that she is only “of Lannisport,” at least. That much she could see in the way he wanted her. He cared most about Lannister blood and in that, at least, she was no less than he. She wondered if he would want her so much if she were to inherit Lannisport. She thought he might, but would she let him take her away if she were given all she was owed? Would she relinquish her seat for his, if she did not know what it was to have to climb? She did not know. She did not care. There was no Joanna—Lady of Lannisport. There was only Lady Joanna of Lannisport. And that Joanna—that Joanna knew what it was to want more.

Stafford could have Lannisport. She would take Casterly Rock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone on tumblr pointed out to me after I posted this drabble that the Lannisters of Lannisport are bannermen to Casterly Rock. They split off from the Casterly Rock branch hundreds of years ago, similar to the split between Stark and Karstark. I'm not changing the drabble, because I like what I intended, even if I misremembered canon. But I thought I'd make a note of that for all of you!


	18. July, 1863 (Jon)

Jon sits on the main staircase and hears shouting in the parlor. They have been arguing about it for most of the day, but until now, no one had shouted.

"Mother, the only reason I haven’t enlisted is because you didn’t want me too," Robb yells now, and Jon knows, even though he can’t see, that he is waving his draft notice at her, "and now I’ve been called up. You can’t expect me to just sit idly by while the damned rebs—" Jon hears a gasp, and father intones,

"We do not use language like that."

A pause, then a hushed, “I apologize. My temper got the better of me. But you can’t expect me to keep sitting idly by while the rebs rip the country apart, Father. You can’t! Isn’t it my duty?”

Jon hears father make an uncomfortable sound, and he shifts on the stairs, careful to avoid a creak.

"No," Father says uncomfortably, "I can’t."

"Ned," Robb’s mother hisses.

"But war isn’t a glorious thing, Robb," Father continues. "It is a bloody duty. A vicious one." Father doesn’t talk often of the war with the Mexicans, Jon suspects because he doesn’t want Mrs. Stark, or Jon for that matter, to think about Jon’s mother.

"I know that, Father," Robb says a little too quickly.

"But Robb," moans Mrs. Stark, her voice thick with tears, "What about Harvard?"

"Send Jon," Robb says slowly and Jon’s heart skips a beat. He’d never dreamed that he could actually go. Mrs. Stark wouldn’t stand for it. But if Robb wasn’t going to take his admission…

The hope vanishes when he hears Mrs. Stark’s snort of derision. “Jon?”

"Cat."

"He has always wanted to go," Robb says quickly, loyally. "He’s smart. He’d do well. He’d do us all proud." But Jon knows better than to hope.

"Jon will not take your place at Harvard," Mrs. Stark says forcefully. "Jon should be going south to fight the rebs. Not you. Not you." She’s crying, now, and he hears them cross the room to console her.

He knows he shouldn’t begrudge her, knows that it is unkind and unfair. She has given him house and home all his life, and she doesn’t want to send her eldest to die in the war but…

And that’s when it occurs to him, and he knows it’ll make Robb mad, but a part of him doesn’t care. He gets up from the stairs and slips into the parlor.

Father and Robb are standing next to Mrs. Stark, who is sitting on the loveseat with her skirts spread out like a sea around her.

"I’ll fill Robb’s draft," he says quietly and three heads snap to face him.

"Jon," Robb says loudly at the same time that Father exhales it, almost a sigh of defeat.

"I’ll fill Robb’s draft," Jon repeats. "It’s not uncommon—paying someone to fill the draft. It’s what Tyrion Lannister is doing."

"Tyrion Lannister is a dwarf who should never have been drafted," Robb says hotly. "I’m young and able-bodied and—"

Jon ignores him and looks directly at Mrs. Stark. “If I go, you’ll pay for me to go to Harvard?”

Robb’s protest dies on his lips, and pained confusion crosses his face.

Mrs. Stark’s eyes don’t narrow at him the way they usually do. They seem to go dull, if anything, as the tears sink back into their ducts. She stares at him for a good minute, Jon can tell because he counts the seconds ticking away in the grandfather clock, counts them with breath held.

Then she nods.


	19. Ours is the Fury (Orys)

She is a small thing, in truth. Smaller than he had anticipated. Argilac had been broad of shoulder, and even in his age there were cords of muscle on his chest and arms. But Argella…Argella is small. Smaller than Rhaenys, who is smaller than Visenya who is smaller than Aegon who is smaller than he is. Orys is the largest, and Argella the smallest.

She drowns in chains, heavy black iron that is not so dark as her hair and not so light as her eyes. Her eyes are a deep blue, deeper than his, deep like the sea. There is a black bruise along her jaw, and a yellowing one along her eye, and he sees dry white and red on the skin beneath her wrists, a paler red than the red of her lips—chapped, cracked, bleeding—and the red of her nipples.

 _How can one so small have so much color?_  It is a vague thought, a sad one as she glares at him and he feels the words  _Ours is the Fury_  in her gaze. What sort of fury does she bottle within her? What rage would he know for the rest of his days?

Visenya is angry often. She is harsh and stern and argumentative. He knows it grates Aegon. Aegon finds solace in Rhaenys’ gentleness, peace in her laughter. He would know no such peace, no such laughter. That much was the promise of Argella Durrandon’s gaze.

"When you meet her, don’t remind her that you slew her father. She won’t take kindly to that," Rhaenys had said as they had ridden through the rain.

"Better or worse than reminding Visenya I can best her with lance?" he had japed in response,and Rhaenys had laughed. Rhaenys always laughs, and how infectious her laughter is. Perhaps if she laughs now, it would catch and Argella’s face would soften.

No—no, it would grow harder. She is proud. Proud and brought low by her own men, humiliated and presented naked and in bonds and…

His cloak is stained with mud. His cloak is heavy with rainwater, cold and smells of mildew and sweat. It may even—and his stomach lurches at the thought—be stained with the blood of her own father. But he unclasps it all the same and approaches her slowly. He sweeps it around her shoulders, and he sees the skin of her arms erupt in goose bumps before they disappear and she is enveloped by him. Her eyes widen in surprise, and she exhales a quick “Oh,” and for a moment, he sees the anger vanish.

He takes the keys that Massey had given him and unbinds her wrists, then sinks to his knees, determinedly looking only at her legs, and unbinds her ankles.


	20. “That is something you must answer for yourself, Brother Sandor.” (Sandor)

He’s never had the experience of digging a grave.  Not once.  He’s never dug anything before—at least, not with a shovel.  He’d dug plenty with his hands when he was a child and he and Alinore would pretend to be pups burying bones.  Father had yelled at them for dirtying their clothes but that had never stopped them.

The wood of the shovel’s handle in his hands is different from the leather grip of his sword.  Softer, somehow, perhaps because the material is softer than what lay beneath the leather.  Certainly more breakable.  He could easily snap the thing in two.  But he doesn’t.  That would serve no purpose.  And besides, the new blisters on his hands remind him.

It had been a repentance, at first.  Repentance for the lives he’d taken, the lives he’d destroyed, the people he’d maimed, the butcher’s boys he’d flung over Stranger’s—Driftwood’s—back.  Each time he dropped the shovel into the earth, each time it made that slicing sound of metal parting dirt, it was to remind him of the limbs he’d hacked, the bodies he’d torn asunder, the pain he’d inflicted.  And each time he hears it, he feels it.

But the more he digs, the more his muscles change—warring muscles, hardened for fighting, to bear the weight of armor fading, softening, weakening while the ones in his shoulders change from the motion of the digging—the more he realizes there is no repentance, no matter what the brothers tell him.  The gods will never forgive him, no matter how he works for it.  The gods had never loved him—that much he’d learned when his face had been melting off. 

But, even with no hope of forgiveness, he digs.  He digs, and digs, and digs, every day, all day, under the sun, the wind, the rain, the fog off the sea, he digs, digs, digs the whole day through.  Because what else could he do?  What else should he do?  What else is he worthy of doing?

He mentions it to Elder Brother one day while they eat their lunch.  “Do you think you are not worthy of the gods love?” Elder Brother asks.

“The gods have never loved me.  They never will.”

“Why do you think they have never loved you?”

He laughs.  “What love have they ever shown me?” he demands, pointing at his face.  Elder Brother knows the story by now.  They all do.  “What love has ever been shown me?”  _Gentle Mother, font of you don’t deserve the gift of mercy._

“And how would you recognize their love when you do not love yourself?” Elder brother asks him quietly.

He feels his eyes widen, feels his jaw go slack, feels the air cool in the back of his throat.

“What’s there to love?” he asks.

Elder Brother only smiles.  “That is something you must answer for yourself, Brother Sandor.”


	21. Do You Remember Home? (Rickon)

He remembers remembering. It isn't quite the same.

He remembers remembering a castle of strong stone, full of noise and life. He remembers remembering a sister who laughed and told scary stories, a sister who sang and ran her fingers through his hair, two brothers so tall he had to crane his neck to see above their knees, a father he dreamed dead long after he had gone. He remembers remembering a warm room with a warm mother whom he would burrow against when the nightmares came. 

He remembers remembering because now--now he is not truly sure he remembers them at all. Maybe they were dreams he willed into existence after they had emerged from the dark and found that nothing was as they had left it. Maybe he had come up with them because Bran had gone, and he was alone the way he had feared ever since the father he remembered remembering rode south. 

He remembers Bran. Truly remembers Bran. He hears his voice in the wind sometimes. 

The memories of the rest are like echoes, though. The memories of warmth are not warm at all, really, but colder in absence than ever the wind that bites at his skin. But he never sees their faces in his dreams, and at night, he prays for those dreams where he and Shaggydog are the same, and he isn't Rickon anymore. Those dreams are better than the ones of smoke, and ash, and crumpled stone.


	22. It is a peaceful morning (Edmyn)

"Come at once."

"That’s all he says?"

"Yes, My Lord.  ’Come at once.’"

"Verbose bastard."

"My Lord?"

"Peace, Maester Brynden."

Edmyn leans back against the wall, the bench hard beneath him, resting his head against cool stone and closing his eyes.  Through the open windows, he hears the flowing of the Tumblestone, and the chirping of birds.  

It is a peaceful morning, the sort of morning where he would happily have stayed abed with Catelyn, burying his head in her neck while he made her sigh.  Instead, he had to focus his thoughts on Black Harren, and even on peaceful mornings such as this—or perhaps  _especially_  on peaceful mornings such as this, he found it most unplasant to think of Black Harren.

"He sent the note to everyone, then?" Edmyn asks, his eyes still closed.

"My Lord?"

Maester Brynden is new to the castle, and its on days like this that Edmyn wishes dearly that Maester Mern’s health had not failed him.  Maester Brynden is not unintelligent, but he is at least four steps behind where he should be.  

"To everyone.  To Acorn Hall, and Raventree Hall, and Seaguard, and Stone Hedge, and—"

"He does not say. I can only assume that he did, My Lord.  Riverrun is hardly the closest hall to Harrenhal."

Edmyn makes a noise in the back of his throat, considering.  Then he snorts.  ” _Now_  he would distract the Brackens and the Blackwoods from one another.  When it best suits his purposes.”  He hears Maester Brynden’s unspoken “My Lord?” in his silence, and sighs.  ”He never seeks to soothe the antagonism between them.  He worsens it, in fact.  But now that he needs them to save him from dragons, I suppose…”  He does not finish the thought aloud.  He does not need to.  He has said it time and again, how House Hoare is the bane of the Riverlands, how these Iron Men should not be here, how they harry the smallfolk and crow their victories to the stars.  

"He pits us against one another," he says, more to the room than to Maester Brynden.  "He encourages the strife between Blackwood and Bracken, and were Pinkmaiden or Acorn Hall closer to Riverrun, I am most sure he’d do his best to have us at one another’s throats as well.  He likes us weak, except when he needs us."  He hears Maester Brynden make a small cough.  "Yes?"

"What you say is, true, My Lord.  Though I do wonder if…"

"If?" Never had he met so timid a maester.

"I should not say it, My Lord."

Edmyn laughs at that.  ”Which makes it even more important that it be said.  What is it?”

"I wonder if such actions truly make him the lord of the Riverfolk.  How many react to this ‘come at once’ and react as you do?"

Edmyn opens his eyes, and sees the man standing before him with his multi-metaled chain and a very serious expression on his long face.  

"I’d leave him for the dragons without a second thought," he murmurs quietly, and then he straightens, getting to his feet.  "You still have King Aegon’s letter?"

"Yes, My Lord," says Maester Brynden quickly.  "It is in your solar."

"I would read it again."


	23. "Welcome to hell—waiting for your OTP to become canon!" (Bran)

He blames Sansa for it entirely.  Blames her blames her blames her—her and her stupid romance novels and the way she talks about “shipping” as if it’s  _not_ a postal service and rather something that everyone does.  He blames her for listening to One Direction—and writing fanfiction where they all fall in love with one another  _over and over and over again_ —and the way she squeals with delight when they’re watching movies as a family and someone realizes they’re in love with someone else.

Bran blames Sansa.  Entirely.  Because you can’t  _not_  pick up some of that, right?  If you’re constantly exposed to it?  It just sort of osmoses in, right?  Entirely Sansa’s fault.

He sees the way that Arya rolls her eyes a little more frequently around Gendry.  He sees the way that Gendry smiles more around Arya than he does around…well, anyone else.  He notices that they both have this tendency to smack the other across the arm when the other says something they deem stupid.  He notices the way that sometimes, Arya stares at his shoulders.  He notices sometimes the way that Gendry stares at her hips.

And he doesn’t  _want_  to notice  _any of this_.  He really doesn’t.  He wants to focus on his college apps and  _not_  the grad student that Arya brought home for Thanksgiving because he didn’t have anywhere else to go.  He  _wants_  to focus on “Why do you want to go to Middlebury?” (Because he wants to?) or “Please describe a time you overcame a challenge.” (Will they think it too obvious to write about adjusting to his paralysis?   _He shouldn’t even have to worry about that_ ).  He doesn’t want to focus on the way that Arya and Gendry throw popcorn at each other while marathoning  _LOST_.

It gets  _worse_ , if anything, when he overhears Dad grumbling to Mom that he’s not sure how he feels about Arya sharing a bedroom with her friend, even if he’s on an air mattress on the floor.  Not—Dad appends quickly—because he doesn’t trust her.  But because it’s just…he doesn’t know.  (Arya’s nineteen, Ned.  She can take care of herself.)

And, when he can no longer bear it, he brings it up to Sansa.  ”Is it just me or are Arya and Gendry…”

Sansa’s eyes sparkle with delight.  ”It’s  _such_  a best friends trope!”

"A what?"

"A best friends trope," she repeats excitedly.  "Not my favorite to write, but always fun.  Basically, people living in denial for a very long time that they’re actually in love with their best friend."  

"There’s a trope for that?" Bran asks.

"Of course!  There’s a trope for everything!" Sansa says happily.  Then she pauses, and looks at Bran, cocking her head and her eyes going wide.  He doesn’t like that her eyes are going wide like that.  "Bran?"

"What?"

"Do you ship it?"

"What?  I don’t ship things!  No!"

"Bran’s a shipper!"  She croons with delight and kisses his cheek.  "Welcome to hell—waiting for your OTP to become canon!"


	24. Time to fall in love again (Jaqen)

It is in the Black Cells that he decides that it is time to fall in love again.  It is easiest to change faces when no one can see him.  Worse comes to worst, they will bring him up for execution and be unable to find “him.”  But he doubts it will come to that.  More likely he will be able to sneak past with a new face.

Time to fall in love again, a new face, a new name, a new story.  Time to know someone better than he knows himself.  Time to forget everything he once was, everything he once thought he knew, because all of that doesn’t matter anymore.  The only thing that matters is this new man, this new face, this new being.  

Time to fall in love again—this time, with Jaqen H’ghar.  He is now formerly of the free city of Lorath.  He now no longer thinks of himself as “he”—so forward, so rude—but rather as “a man” though whether or not he ever was a man he cannot say.  If ever he was a man, he gave that manhood to the many-faced god, such that a man could come into being, half-formed and unloved.

Time to fall in love again.  What is there to love about a man named Jaqen H’ghar?  A man likes the sound of the sea. A man likes to listen to music, though a man would never be so bold as to sing it.  A man is bad at sums, but good with words.  A man likes the way that cloth drapes over the bodies of those a man meets, the way it folds and dribbles, not quite liquid, not quite stone.  

Time to fall in love again.  A man had a sister once, a lovely girl with a long face and hair like wild sheep’s wool, a muddy brown for want of a washing.  A lovely girl named…Arwen.  Jaqen and Arwen, together from a young age.  Arwen lost herself in the mazes.  Jaqen does not speak of it.  A man’s pain is too deep, for a man forgets a sister’s face, with only descriptions of a girl lost and wandering to fill a man’s most solitary moments.  A sister’s loss opened a boy’s eyes, and never again could a boy believe in the Blind God.  A boy turned a boy’s gaze and prayers to the Lord of Light, for fire illuminates the dark.

Time to fall in love again—Jaqen H’ghar has never been in love.  A man thinks he might have been, once.  But a man does not know what love should be.  A man once saw a Tyroshi whose hair was as blue as a robin’s egg.  A man found it beautiful.  A man would not look so lovely with hair of blue.  A man’s skin is too pale and a man’s money not enough to wash it frequently to keep the blue pure.  Red like rust, white like sea foam instead.  Colors for the Red God.  

Time to fall in love again; time to forget who he once was.  He was once nothing.  He was once no one.  There was nothing to love about him.  He did not lose everything—he gave it all away, such that he could, one day, fall in love with Jaqen H’ghar.  But Jaqen H’ghar does not love him.  Jaqen H’ghar does not know what love is.  And he…he will not love Jaqen H’ghar for forever.  One day, he will give Jaqen H’ghar away again, and he will fall in love with someone new.


	25. Ghosts of Winterfell (Lyanna)

"But—"

"Don’t be stupid, Benjen."

"But it’s—"

"Hush. Do you want swords or not?"

"Can’t we ask Boyle?"

"He will tell father, and then I will be locked inside all day with  _sewing_. This is the only way.”

It wasn’t, but there was no need to tell Benjen that. They could have found a way to sneak swords out of the armory, but there was always the risk that they would have been caught. She could also have asked Brandon when he was home from Barrowton, but he might have told father just because he could. Brandon was unpredictable. Ned wouldn’t have had anything to do with it, of course, but Ned was off in the Eyrie and didn’t visit home ever. So it was just her—her and Benjen, and Benjen was being stupid.

He had been all excited at the idea of dueling with her when she had brought it up to begin with. But the idea of taking swords from the crypts had turned him craven.

"What if the ghosts wake up and look for their swords?" Benjen hissed at her. Her candle flickered in the dark. His eye sockets looked like they were empty at this angle, like his face was one big skull.

"Ghosts aren’t real, Benjen," she sighed. She reached over and ran her hands over the rough head of a stone direwolf. It did not growl at her in the black.

"Old Nan says they are," Benjen insisted.

"Well, Old Nan is old. Old and can’t keep straight whether I am me or mother." How often had Old Nan called her Lyarra by accident. She was  _not_  mother. She was alive.  _Alive_.

Suddenly the crypts seemed very dark, and her candle flickered again as if in a draft. On their left they saw empty alcoves where father and Brandon would one day be carved into stone.  _Not me, though,_  Lyanna thought.  _I will never die. Not ever. I am_  not  _mother._

"Old Nan—" Benjen began, but Lyanna cut him off.

"Here. Take this." It was an old sword, and rusting a bit, and gods but it was heavy as she hefted it and handed it to Benjen.

"This is too big for me," he whined.

"It will make you stronger," she said, knowingly. Brandon always said that you should train with heavy weapons. They made your muscles better.

Benjen tried swinging it and hit the wall by accident, chipping some of the stone loose. “Careful!” Lyanna snapped.

"I’m trying!"

They glared at each other in the dark for a second, then Lyanna marched up the row and grabbed a second sword for herself. It was heavier than the one she had given Benjen, and more rusty too.

"All right you have yours," Benjen said, his voice sounding like the squeak of a mouse. "Now let’s go."

Lyanna turned to face him, but paused halfway there. Her shadow filled one of the alcoves, bigger than she was now, its form distorted against the stone so that it looked more grown up, more womanly.

 _I am not going to die like mother_ , Lyanna thought as panic flooded her.  _I am not. I am_ not. I am going to live forever.

She felt chills erupt across her skin and she hurried past Benjen.

"Are you scared?" Benjen practically laughed after, as though her fear had suddenly given him bravery.

"No. Come on, stupid. Let’s fight." She took the stairs up to the surface two at a time, determined that the sun of the godswood would warm her, that it would shine away all shadows from the crypts.


	26. "Mother, can I go flying with the lady?" (Visenya)

She lands in the inner courtyard, Vhagar’s wings kicking up dust and leaves and dirt.  The courtyard is empty, the windows that look out over it are shuttered, and, when the wind settles, everything is still.  Perhaps this is how the Eyrie got it’s name—how eerily quiet it is.  

Eerily quiet, or cowardly.  She is not sure.  They must know what awaits them if they come out—Queen Sharra and her little—

"Hello," comes a voice.  It is the high pitched voice of a boy child, and when she turns, she sees him standing there, with brown hair slightly ruffled and his eyes are blue and wide.  

"Hello," Visenya responds.  She walks over to crouch by the boy so that their eyes are at a level.  He is finely dressed, in velvet of a dark blue, so unlike the clear color of his eyes.  There is a falcon’s pin at his throat.   _So this is the little king._ "Have you been out here this whole time?" she asks.

Ronnel Arryn nods.  ”I heard the dragon’s wings.  I wanted to see how big he was.” Visenya casts a glance over her shoulder.  Vhagar is crouched, catlike, and watching at them.  ”He is very big,” says the boy.

"He is.  Old as well," Visenya says.

"How old?" asks the boy.

"Near on fifty," Visenya responds.  The boys eyes go wide.  

"That is older than mother!"

Visenya almost smiles at that.  She has never been fond of children—they squall and complain more often than not, but there is something beautiful in the excited way Ronnel Arryn now cranes his neck to stare at the dragon.

"Is he hard to ride?" Ronnel asks.

"For others—yes.  He’s willful and hot tempered."  She hears Vhagar make a huff, as though he’d heard and was displeased at the description.  "But not for me."

"Do you fly him every day?"  

 _The boy is eager,_ Visenya thinks.   _So eager.  And young.  I should hate to have to—_

_You will bring me the Vale, Visenya?_

_With fire and blood, if need be, brother._

"I do," she whispers and the smile grows across his face.  

"My ancestor flew a giant falcon!" he says excitedly.  "He slew the Griffin King and claimed the Vale for House Arryn."  

"He was very brave," Visenya says.  "It is a scary thing to fly.  One moment you are soaring, the next you are falling."

"Have you ever fallen?"

"No."

Ronnel looks at her, suddenly shy and he scuffs his foot against the ground.  ”Could I…Could you…could you take me flying?”

 _With fire and blood, if need be, brother._ She almost smiles again.  Perhaps there would be no need.

"We shall have to ask your mothe—"

"Ronnel!" the voice rings across the courtyard, the terrified cry of a mother.

Ronnel Arryn turns and waves at her as she hurries towards them, a dozen guards at her back, keeping as great a distance between herself and Vhagar as she can.  Visenya stands slowly and turns to face her, keeping her face as gentle as she able.  It is a difficult thing.  Orys had oft laughed that she made gentleness look a chore.

"Mother, can I go flying with the lady?" Ronnel asks excitedly.

Queen Sharra stares between the two of them, her mouth slightly opened, and moments later, Visenya is helping the little Lord onto Vhagar’s back.

And when they take to the sky, he lets out a whoop of pleasure that echoes through the courtyard and off the mountains, so fast does Vhagar rise.  He clings to her, but she can see that he is not afraid—not afraid at all.  And it is at that, at last, that she smiles.  

She is glad that she did not have to lay House Arryn low.  The Arryns know what it is to fly.


	27. bowing, bending, breaking (Aegon)

His hand does not shake as he removes the orange seal.  It does not tremble, the parchment does not flutter—everything is still, still as a windless night, everything except his heart which beats a violent tattoo against his ribs.

 _Your grace_ , he reads in an unfamiliar hand.   _I have nothing further to say than what is said below._

_Nymor, Prince of Sunspear_

His heart beats faster, his hand remains still.

 _Brother,_ He knows that hand—knows it well, knows it from the songs she had written to show him, knows it from the letters she had written him over years of war and peace, knows it and had not thought to ever see it again.  The color of the ink is different—more brown than black, and it is a poor ink for it chips away and fades too soon.  Too soon will her words be gone.

_Brother, I live, if this can be called life.  I am dead for death is all that remains to me.  I see no light save the candles, I feel no heat from the stones.  I am broken—broken at the hips from when Meraxes fell, broken—broken in the heart for I know I shall never see my son’s face again, see yours, and our sister’s._

_They will not free me.  They have made that clear.  And the freedom I would take for myself they deny me.  Please, brother.  Please free me.  Let them stand unbowed, unbent, unbroken that I might at last be free._

_If ever you loved me, let me die._

She does not sign it.  She does not need to.  Rhaenys never signed anything.  He could recognize her hand blind.  

He feels Visenya’s gaze, stern, hard, unyielding.  He doesn’t even bother to look at the Dornish Princess, who he is sure smiles for she must know…

He stands abruptly, stands and folds the letter in his hand, watching as his blood—his blood, had he cut himself on the throne?—smears on the back of the parchment.   _Her blood, my blood,_ he thinks bitterly.  He descends from the throne, marches past the crowds of men come to see the Dornish appeal, out, out, out, into the yard.  He finds Balerion and mounts him without a word and they take to the sky, as high and as fast as they can go.

_Please free me._

_If you ever loved me, let me die._

And when he is high enough that the wind roars around him, he lets out a howl of rage, of pain, and he curls over the back of the dragon as tears stream down his face.  His sister, his sweet sister, sweetest sister, his love, his life, the mother of his heir, the bride of his desire.  Had he not mourned her enough already?  Would he not mourn her for the rest of his life?  How could he have mourned her while still she lived, while there had been yet hope she could be returned to him?  But if he had not mourned her, surely she would have died.   _The freedom I would take for myself they deny me._

What demons they are in the sands.  What horrible monsters, vipers and scorpions, twisted and poisonous and cruel that they would do this.  That they would use her pain, her voice, her death—death for they would not let her live, death for they have broken her so thoroughly she does not wish to—to break him.

And he knows he should not concede.  Visenya would have shrieked and had Princess Deria’s head, emissary or no.  Visenya would have burned all of Dorne, but burning all of Dorne would not bring peace—would not bring Rhaenys peace.

He lets out another angry howl, and this time, Balerion roars with him, and the dragon’s cry covers the sound of Aegon Targaryen, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the  _Rhoynar_  and the First of Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, bowing, bending, breaking.


	28. Please, Aemon. (Aemon)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a rape cw for this drabble.

He hears her tears through the bedroom door and grips the hilt of his sword.  His knuckles are white and he wonders if his fingers will go numb.  

_The gods have cursed us both._ _Speak not ill of the gods, brother._ _I will speak ill of the gods as I please, Naerys._ _The gods have cursed us both._ _Please, Aemon._

She has never been one to cry.  Never.  She would always bite back tears, her brow furrowing, her eyes dropping to her hands, her lips pursing.  But she never cries—not ever, not till now.

_I would kill him if I could.  The gods look ill upon kinslaying—do not even think it.  The gods look ill upon incest as well but that doesn’t stop them upholding this marriage.  You know that it is custom and the gods…The gods will not make this right, sister.  Please, Aemon._

She is so small, his little sister.  So much smaller than he is—pale and gentle and quiet, always tentative. He would break down the door if he could and take her away, but some sickening part of him knew she wouldn’t thank him for it, even if she wanted to.  She takes all vows so seriously, and she had sworn new ones that morning, even if she didn’t want them.

_You will not dishonor our sister at her own wedding, brother.  I haven’t done anything yet, and I shan’t this night, fear not—my attentions shall only be given to our sweet sister, even if they should be given elsewhere.  Bite your tongue, brother.  Please, Aemon._

Why is it that Aemon always stops, always holds himself back when Naerys bids it, but when she most needs him, when he would kick the door down and rip them apart, it is he who must stop himself?  He would sail to farthest Asshai if she bade it, but now, every tear is a plea that he help her and he cannot.  It is no longer his place.  She has been cloaked by a different brother.

_I would run away with you—don’t look at me like that, I’m serious, Naerys, we’ll wrap ourselves in dark cloaks and sail across the sea, and you can take your vows and I’ll…What will you do?  It is folly to even think this, brother.  It is not folly, merely undeveloped, give it time and I shall solve it, and you won’t have to marry our brother.  You and I both know that it would never work.  It could! Do not raise my hopes like this, brother. But Naerys! _Please, Aemon.__

"Please, Aegon.  You’re hurting me."

He hears her tears, and Aegon does not stop.  Aegon never stops.


	29. "And I am a mountain" (Arya Flint)

"They call him the Wandering Wolf," she’d heard her father say. 

"He must be a wanderer to come this far into the hills," she’d heard her uncle respond thickly through a mouthful of stew.

"These Starks, calling themselves the this wolf, and the that wolf. It’s as silly as if I called myself the Wandering Mountain, isn’t it?" she’d heard her brother say.

"What could he want?" she’d heard her mother snap. "He’ll fall off the mountain if he’s not careful, and Starks are never careful with their climbing."

Arya watches him come, watches him pick his way up the mountain path leading his horse and one hand against the rock face. He is taller than she’d expected. To hear her father speak of it, Starks are not so tall for there was no mountain in their blood. She cannot see his face, at all, he is so swaddled in scarves, his cloak wrapped tight about his body and belted shut. At least Starks seem to know how to gird themselves for winter.

She watches him come closer and closer until she hears him make a sound of surprise and he calls, “Hey! Girl!”

She cocks her head, smiling. He would think her a girl, she supposes. She’s far enough away, and wrapped in her own cloak, but she’s too old to be a girl now. The Norrey had been been clear to say so when he’d supped at their table a moon past, commenting on how The Flint’s girl had grown a fine set of teats. ”Like the mountains, they are!” he’d bellowed in his cups, and her father had laughed while Arya had blushed and slumped down in her seat because they were hardly as big as her mother’s—hardly mountains at all—and besides, she did not want everyone to stare at them. But the Wandering Wolf would have had no way of seeing them beneath her furs.

"How far until I reach Lord Flint’s holdings?" he calls to her. "Lord Flint" he names her father. Perhaps he has simply never wandered in this part of the North, and doesn’t know any better.

Arya smiles down at him. ”Well, if you take the road, you’ve got another half a day.” She doesn’t hear him grown above the wind, though from the way his body twists she can tell the news is not quite welcome.

"There is no faster way?" he calls back.

"If you scale the mountain," she responds, cocking her head and looking up the rock face. She’s climbed it for years—in snow, in rain, in sunshine. She knows the footholds and the resting places and, more importantly, knows that home is only an hour away. 

"I could not leave my horse," he curses. 

"No, you could not," she agrees, and she gets to her feet and climbs quickly down to the road. "But at least, I shall keep you company along the way. It will be faster—I know where the road is."

She sees his eyes, grey like the sky overhead widen slightly. 

"Forgive me, I thought you a girl but I see now that you are not." 

She tilts her head and suppresses a smile. ”I’ve heard that you are a Wandering Wolf, but I see that you are not.” She begins to walk the path, picking her way through the snow and stone. ”Only a man.”

"I am a wolf," he says quickly, and she hears snow crunching behind her. "I am Rodrik Stark, of Winterfell."

"I am Arya Flint," she laughs. "And I am a mountain."


	30. “with Blackwood stubbornness” (Celia)

Celia hears raised voices in the solar, and presses her ear to the door.  She is tall now, and, her father says, still growing, and she could bend her knees to press her ear to the key-hole, but she does not.  Instead, she finds the crack, though the sound coming through it will be less clear.

"Betha promised—" she hears her mother begin.

"Well, it seems that Betha’s children are as willful as ever Betha was."

"Edgar—"

"Aly, just because she’s your sister—"

"And the  _queen,_  Edgar.  Be careful what you say about the  _queen_.”  That gives her father pause, and Celia’s breath catches in her throat.  

She knows her father has a…distaste for her royal aunt.  Celia’s mother had described it as having—both of them—too strong a will to be getting on with.  ”Sometimes the strong-willed do not appreciate one another so well as they should,” her mother had explained when they had ridden back from King’s Landing the last time, her father at the head of the party with Hoster.  Hoster had been barely older than a babe, and he had clutched at the saddle of his pony almost out of fear.  Celia had wanted desperately to ask her mother  _what_  Aunt Betha and Father had argued about, but she knew her mother would not say, and so had held her tongue.  

But now…now if she just listens, she might…

Her father’s voice is quieter now, though it still trembles with anger.  ”She should have been able to prevent this, Aly.  What do you propose we tell Celia?  She got on  _well_  with that boy when last we visited  _her_.”

 _What could they have to tell me?  Surely nothing ill has befallen Jaehaerys._ She is to wed Jaehaerys when she is old enough.  And she will be old enough soon.  She is thirteen now, and flowered, though her mother insists, (“with Blackwood stubbornness,” her father had muttered) that she must wait until she is at  _least_ sixteen before they even begin preparing for the wedding.  ”Leave me my little girl a little while longer, Edgar,” her mother had begged.  Celia had wanted her father to refuse.  She was  _ready_  to wed Prince Jaehaerys, of the charming wit and kind eyes.  

"I don’t know what we’ll tell her."  Mother’s voice is so quiet Celia must strain to hear it.  "We’ll…we’ll find her a good match.  A Mallister or—Lord Arryn’s heir is not yet betrothed.  He is of an age with Celia.  Mayhaps they shall find happiness with one another."

Father makes a growling sound. “She  _liked_  that—”

"Will you kindly not refer to my nephew as  _that boy,_  my lord?”  Mother cuts through him vehemently.  ”I am no happier than you are with this—be  _sure_  of that—and there is a strong part of me that wishes to march down to King’s Landing and teach Betha how to raise her children such that they are _obedient_ , but—”

"What about Lyonel Tyrell’s boy.  What’s his name.  Leo?  Aren’t they all named Leo?   _He_  got thrown over by all this as well.”

“ _I am not marrying my daughter to Lyonel Tyrell’s son and that is final._ ”

She hears her father laugh, and mutter something to the effect of “Still haven’t forgiven him, then?” but Celia’s head is spinning.  Why would Luthor Tyrell and Princess Shaera’s betrothal be at an end unless…unless…

Cold realization sweeps over her. 

Jaehaerys and his sister had always been close.  They sat together at every meal, and laughed at jokes only the two of them understood.  They held hands while walking through the gardens, they made sure to dance with one another at balls…and now…

They’d gone and gotten married, hadn’t they.  She is sure of it, sure that they had eloped, despite the wishes of their parents, despite the fact that Jaehaerys had been  _promised_  to her, and she was to be  _queen_  because Prince Duncan had given up the possibility of the crown when he’d wed Lady Jenny.  

She wants to cry, she wants to curse, she wants kick something, even as she hears her father snap something vicious about her Aunt again, but Celia doesn’t even begin to blame Aunt Betha. This is Jaehaerys’ fault, Jaehaerys who had always made mock of his father’s instance that the Valyrian tradition of wedding brother to sister be ended in such a way that no one—clearly—had realized he wasn’t jesting at all.  

She doesn’t wish to eavesdrop anymore, doesn’t want to hear who her parents scramble to find for her.  She backs away from the door and marches out onto the curtain walls of the castle and spits her anger into the river.   _Damn him,_ she thinks venomously, and the sheer wickedness sends a ripple of guilty pleasure through her.   _Damn Jaehaerys straight to hell._


End file.
